How safe are your children at school?

HEADTEACHER BEVERLEY Robinson had just come out of the hall when she saw a man emerging from the school's cellar.

"He had an armful of school resources, books and paper and the like," she said.

"I wasn't thinking clearly and I just said to him 'Good morning, can I help you?' in a very polite way. Well, he just dropped the stuff and bolted out of the school as fast as he could go.

"It's funny in a way, because my first thoughts were not suspicions and it was only really after I spoke to him that I thought on."

Intruders used to be par for the course in most schools, which are, after all, built to be open and welcoming.

And at the time that most of Bradford's 250-plus school buildings were erected, the idea of someone coming in to school with the aim of stealing or hurting pupils simply wasn't on the agenda.

Dunblane changed all of that. Mrs Robinson's school, All Saints C of E First in Kennion Street, Bradford, is one of the many in the district to benefit from just under £500,000 worth of investment in security in the years following the dreadful massacre. She has had equipment worth around £3,200 installed to make the school a safer place.

Anybody approaching the main building is under the watchful eye of three CCTV cameras dotted around the outside of the building. More are inside to keep check on visitors - and children.

Staff on playground duty also carry walkie-talkies to enable them to keep in touch with the main building and report any suspicious goings-on.

Aside from that, all outside rooms have electronic door locks that will only open with special codes. All visitors must also sign in and wear badges clearly identifying their status to all.

It sounds like the kind of security worthy of a palace, but it is very commonly found behind the school gates in Bradford and the rest of the country.

"Security is uppermost, you cannot overstate security. We have got to keep our children safe."

Mrs Robinson believes that the extra security measures have made a huge difference. Certainly the casual thief is deterred, which is the main threat.

At Crossflatts First School in Bingley, one of the key security measures has involved training staff.

Headteacher Andrew Neal said it was important for staff to recognise when they should deal with a matter and when to see they should call in colleagues or the police.

"Staff are trained to know when it is appropriate for them to challenge somebody and when they should contact somebody else, because we do not want to put staff in danger.

"It is important to get the right balance between an open environment and a safe environment. We want to control people who come into school, but we do not want to make the children scared."

Philip Hoyle, Bradford Council's School Security Officer, has an overview of the problem.

His team was responsible for training 2,000 teachers in security matters last year because, as he says, it is not just a case of having good locks, it is also using them.

"You can have the best lock in the world, but if someone props the door open with a chair, there is not much point in it," he said.

Making schools safe and secure environments for children and staff is absolutely paramount and Bradford has a pot of £250,000 from the government this year to improve security further.

But he warns not to blow the problem out of proportion.

"Every school in the district will be able to tell anecdotes about intruders or some strange person hanging around.

"Tragic though the events in Denver or Dunblane were, they are not everyday occurrences."

Events like these have rightly forced people to think about security, but now more than ever, schools are safe and secure places.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.